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Book Review: The Man in the High Castle

 

The Man in the High Castle by Philip K. Dick
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

President-Elect Franklin Roosevelt is assassinated in Miami. Isolationism dominates American politics. The Nazis prevail in North Africa and link up with the Japanese in India. Russia collapses. Washington D.C. disintegrates under a Nazi hydrogen bomb. World War II ends in 1947 with Germany, Japan (and Italy) victorious.

Such is the world of 1962 San Francisco where curio salesman Robert Childan labors to please his mostly Japanese clients. Among them are Nobusuke Tagomi, an influential trade minister whose career is guided by the ancient Chinese book of divination, the I Ching.

Also dependent on the book's forecasts is judo instructor Juliana Frink. She lives in a puppet buffer zone between the Japanese West Coast and the German-controlled Mid-West, South and East. An encounter with a man claiming to be an Italian truck driver leads Juliana to read a fascinating—yet banned—book in which the allies win the second world war.

Using rapid POV shifts, Dick whisks us between characters as Juliana's husband struggles back in San Francisco to manufacture original jewelry while hiding his Jewish blood. At the same time, Juliana and the truck driver set off on a road trip to locate the banned book's author. Meanwhile, Tagomi facilitates a meeting between Japanese and German intermediaries working to derail a diabolical plot that could plunge the world into another terrible war.

Dick parcels out the backstory while keeping the narrative hot. His shifts in POV sometimes lost me, as did his stylized dialogue for certain inner monologues. And I wasn't sure what role the I-Ching played, other than to suggest the future is fluid, other worlds possible.

As one character mulls, "Evidently we go on, as we always have. . . . But we cannot do it all at once; it is a sequence. An unfolding process. We can only control the end by making a choice at each step."

Great alternative history with a tart blend of science fiction and mysticism.

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Story Du Jour #16

All Story Du Jour tales are available online and free! A small offering in these trying times.

Starfield Composite HD

Cossmass Infinities

"The Hard Quarry" - by Caleb Huitt

6434 words

In space, only the pirates can hear you scream.

Here's a sample of the writing:

"One hundred fifty million klicks separate Earth’s moon from the asteroid belt, give or take, and even the small Mars outpost is seventy million k from the nearest asteroids. I force deep breaths as I confront what every miner knows, in their heart: if something goes wrong, ain’t no SOS that can summon the cavalry in time.

Those distances are best case, and now is not that. I’m at least twice as far and getting farther each minute I’m out here. That’s not all. Blame a bad breakup, but when I grabbed my claim I took the one furthest from anyone else. Hell, registered stakes are 25 klicks per side, tiny in interstellar terms—but miners have always been an ornery bunch, and antisocial, and—in particular—suspicious someone else’ll find our best rocks and take them. We don’t go near each other, as a rule.

 The nearest other claim to me is a few hundred k distant. My neighbor’s not there, because otherwise her ship’d be on my console. If any other ship passes within a million k or so, they show up, at least briefly. But none appear—the absences notably including the pirates. This is my worst nightmare, worsened by the fact I’m outside my fucking spacesuit as I hotline the engines. If anything’s shittier than greeting pirates, it’s doing so buck-ass naked."

Longer than the last one I said was long, but a fine venture into the realm of space opera. Another story soon. 

Book Review: The Jack Vance Treasury

The Jack Vance Treasury by Jack Vance
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Grab you dictionary, it's Jack Vance! An old school master of sci-fi and fantasy, the author's Hugo and Nebula-award winning stories are included in this eighteen-tale anthology. Marvel at "The Dragon Masters," where an inquisitive Prince on a far-off world battles to hold his kingdom together in the face of a dragon war, the secretive politics of a powerful aloof race, and an alien invasion intent on enslaving humanity.

On another planet where everyone wears masks, a methodical official struggles to uncover the identify of a wanted assassin in "The Moon Moth." In "The Last Castle," a collection of spoiled sophisticates discovers the unpleasant truth that the lower orders have plans and goals that don't include the sophisticates.

In addition, several stories appear from Vance's Dying Earth canon. Set in a remote eon when our sun is a red giant, on the verge of guttering out, the selections feature picaresque protagonists afoot in a fragmented society of clannishness, bizarre customs, powerful magic, and sinister monstrosities capable of reason.

This book is best read on Kindle so as to take advantage of the dictionary function. Vance loved the English language, not to mention Old English, Latin and French. Prepare to encounter words such as "helminths," "nacre," and, a personal favorite, "nuncupatory" (obsolete.) Language and communication are themes in several Vance stories. And while the vocabulary can be vexing, it contributes to a depth and sense of place that enriches the author's unique works.

So sample the tales of Jack Vance. Enjoyment will eventuate.

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My Jack Vance obituary.

Story Du Jour #10

All Story Du Jour tales are available online and free! A small presentation in these trying times.

Flash Fiction Online

"Keeping Time with the Joneses" - by Wendy Nikel

521 words

Trouble on the block after the neighbors splurge on fancy scientific equipment. 

Here's a sample of the writing:

"Initially, no one complained about the Joneses’ extravagant time-themed parties. The machine spun and flashed into all hours of the night as neighborhood couples in flapper dresses and top hats slipped bottles of SKYY vodka into ’20s speakeasies. The binge-watch of the first five Super Bowls was all anyone could talk about for weeks, and even Mrs. Martin herself had to reluctantly admit that Oklahoma! was better with the original cast."

What next? Something. I assure you. Something will be next.

Short Story Du Jour #6

"Childish, but not for children."

Space Squid 

“Old Habits” by Frances Pauli 

3429 words 

There’s no life like the afterlife, but there are some things only the living can offer. A wry tale of what could lay beyond this mortal coil.

Here’s a sample of the writing:

"The cowboy crossed in the open, an old habit, not any more necessary than the twin revolvers hanging low around his hips. He only kept them for the memories. One hand still hovered over each polished butt, and he still imagined his spurs jangling as he moved, heard the faint echo of a lifetime of chink, chink, chink in his steps. 

This particular saloon wasn't much. He spat again before pushing through swinging doors that were just a hair off kilter. Even the conversations inside were muted, the voices somehow subdued by the ominous and continuous presence of death. Not too different from the old days to be honest, but the afterlife carried a depressing and lackluster aura with it, a cheap facsimile only simulating real life."

I'm not sure what tomorrow will be other than later on.

Short Story Du Jour #4

Andis Reinbergs

 Beneath Ceaseless Skies

“The Sniper and I” by Rich Larson 

3,439 words 

 Intriguing military sci-fi that examines the result of a smart weapon becoming too clever. Some initially confusing pronoun use, but turns out not to be an affect, but germane to the story. 

 Here’s a sample of the writing: 

 “On the way back to camp, we wound between the birds’ crumpled bodies. I stepped on one by accident, and its bones made a noise under my boot like ice crust breaking. The sniper turned back to look at me, reproachful, either for the noise or for the trespass. A little farther on, the sniper found an immaculate corpse. It had fallen with the others, but somehow its feathers were snow white, untouched by the smog. They crouched down and picked it up, turning it over in their hands, extending one delicate wing and then the other.” 

My fourth short story, chosen at random, and I’ve yet to locate an American author. I’ll find one. You just wait. Tomorrow, a change of pace.

Today's Short Story Recommendation

"Time Reveals the Heart"

As I'm reading more short stories to better my own, I've decided to share my discoveries with the

Clarkesworld Sci Fi and Fantasy

half-dozen regular readers of this blog.

Today's offering hails from Clarkesworld: "Time Reveals the Heart" by Derek Kunsken. (His name contains an umlaut over the u, but I can't figure out how to add one.)

Here's the opening paragraph of this science fiction tale:

"Guo Lěi mounted the stairs to his mother’s apartment at seven in the morning. He hadn’t visited in two weeks; he never knew what he would find. It was early, but he had a launch today, maybe several, and no matter what, he tried to see his mother before every launch, just in case. When silence answered his knocks, he used his key."

That's pretty nifty writing. You've got your foreshadowing, the knowledge that the protagonist's work is dangerous, and that his mother's health is an issue all bundled in the action of knocking on the door. It'd take me a page and half to get all that out. 

A story exploring time travel, addiction, the dangers of altered perception, and the worth of reality, this is a quick read, not too heavy on dialogue with nice descriptive touches such as "His voice sounded like falling drops of water, shapeless, wobbling in free fall, transparent."

Weighing in at 5804 words, "Time Reveals the Heart" is available online and as a podcast at the Clarkesword site.